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CHAPTER 12<br />
Contact with Extraterrestrial<br />
Civilizations<br />
EARLY IN 1961, Otto Struve, the director of the National Science<br />
Foundation's radio astronomy observatory at Green Bank, West<br />
Virginia, and Frank Drake, his assistant, initiated Project Ozma<br />
to search for radio signals from outer space, in order to determine<br />
if there were other civilizations in space trying to contact<br />
us. Nobody was prepared for what was going to happen, even<br />
those who had worked so long and so hard to finally get the authorization<br />
to perform the experiment.<br />
There are several stars<br />
located at a reasonable distance from<br />
the earth, only a few light-years away, suspected of having a<br />
planetary system comparable to ours. For some reason, it was decided<br />
that the most favorable of these stars in 1961 was the star<br />
Tau Ceti, a star in the constellation of Cetus, the Whale, which<br />
is located close to the celestial equator and next to the constellation<br />
of Aries, the Ram.<br />
The huge parabolic antenna of the observatory was aimed in<br />
the direction of Tau Ceti; the mechanism of compensation for<br />
the rotation of the earth was set in motion; then the receiver,<br />
maser amplifier, and recorder were turned on. The only thing<br />
left to be done was to wait, but those attending the experiment<br />
did not have to wait too long.<br />
Almost immediately, the needle of the recorder began indicating<br />
strong signals which, for any specialist in space com-
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